MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Cup Series cars took the white flag at nearly 200 mph, marking one more lap in the Daytona 500. Suddenly, they came to a stop as Michael McDowell leaned forward and hit pause on the YouTube video.
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"If you back it up to right there, the 3 (Austin Dillon) and the 9 (Chase Elliott) now have the opportunity to kind of make a run," McDowell explained to FanBuzz while rewatching the finish of the 2021 Daytona 500. "What they didn't anticipate was not clearing the 4 (Kevin Harvick).
"So right here, when they were clear of the 4, that's when the 3 needed to move down while the 9 was clear. But they waited just a little too long, and then the 4 gets there, and so now they can't really work together, and so that's what kind of broke it up."
This quick sequence of events is one that often gets overlooked when looking back at the final two laps of the 2021 Daytona 500.
Yet, as McDowell rewatched the finish on a rainy Wednesday morning at the Spire Motorsports shop, he pointed to Austin Dillon and Chase Elliott getting disconnected as an important factor in his first career Cup Series win with Front Row Motorsports.
When Dillon jumped to the bottom of the track, he ended up in front of Kevin Harvick. Yet, Elliott ran out of time to also clear Harvick and keep the Chevy train moving. So, he began pushing McDowell.
"(Dillon) ended up getting a decent run, and had there been a little bit more momentum, I think he would have been in a good spot. But the 9 picked me up, which just happened to work out really well."
Really well could be considered an understatement. After all, McDowell remained third in line behind race leader Joey Logano and then-Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski. He remained exactly where he wanted on the final lap of the Daytona 500.
Why didn't McDowell want to be leading at this exact moment? A simple answer is that he knew how Logano and Keselowski raced.
He knew that Keselowski would want to make a late pass by backing up and generating a run, something that drivers could still do in the Gen 6 era. The 2012 Cup Series champion had used this exact maneuver to get around Harvick before taking the white flag. McDowell followed and also passed Harvick.
McDowell also knew that Logano would aggressively block Keselowski's attempted pass. Once he saw this start to unfold, he could go in the opposite direction with a push from Elliott and potentially take the lead.
"Right here at this point, Brad starts to drag off of Joey," McDowell said after resuming the race replay. "And I was like, 'Okay, I got them both.'
"Yeah, because I knew what was going to happen. Brad was going to take the run, and Joey was going to block (laughs). There's no doubt that this is what's going to happen!"
Well, the situation happened (mostly) as McDowell predicted. Keselowski backed up to generate a run and Logano prepared to block. However, the two Team Penske drivers made contact at a bad angle, which sparked the crash that ended the race.
Keselowski slammed hard into the outside wall. Logano first slid into the grass before sliding back up into the pack. Chaos unfolded as McDowell, Elliott, Dillon, Kyle Larson, Harvick, and Denny Hamlin raced on. Though Larson ultimately hit the wall and spun as the caution flew for the final time.
The race didn't end for McDowell. He knew that NASCAR may not immediately throw the caution, so he blocked Elliott. This kept him in the lead until race control hit the button and officially ended the Daytona 500.
So what happened in those final seconds as McDowell went from third in the running order to a crown jewel winner?
"So if you ask Brad, I ran him into Joey," McDowell said as he reversed the video to the moment of the crash. "At this point, I'm off of his bumper, and he's turning Joey. But it only looks like he's turning Joey, because Joey's turning left to block Brad.
"If Joey doesn't turn left there, Brad and him are side by side, and then I'm deciding who am I going to go with, or am I going to go three wide?"
McDowell didn't have to make that decision. The Team Penske drivers crashed and he raced through unscathed. And sure, he could tell you that he had played out this exact scenario in his mind and that he used his heightened reflexes to avoid the incident.
Photo credit: Spire Motorsports
The veteran driver studied extensively during his time with Front Row Motorsports, and he continues to do so with Spire Motorsports and the No. 71 team so that he can be in the best position when it matters.
But sometimes, drivers just have to hold on and go for the ride in the closing seconds of a superspeedway race.
"I would love to tell you that, like, 'Oh, I made all the right decisions,'" McDowell said (laughs). "I didn't make any decisions. He went left and he went right.
"Now the only decision I had to make was blocking the 9 because the race really isn't over. No, if I don't make that block right here on the 9, the 9 wins because the caution's still not out."
McDowell didn't predict this exact finish of the 2021 Daytona 500, but he did come close. He had a conversation early in the morning of Sunday, Feb. 14, 2021, and he laid out how he would put himself in position to win this crown jewel race.
"Blake Koch called me — and he never talks racing. Like we talk racing in general, but never like specific," McDowell said. "He's like, 'What are you gonna do to win this race?' And I said, 'I'm gonna push the Penske cars to the white flag, and wherever they go, I'm gonna go the opposite.'
"And he's like, 'What do you mean?' I'm like, 'Nobody's gonna be able to touch us if we're together, and I'm just gonna push those guys to the front and then sort it out.' And so with three laps to go, I was like, 'Oh my goodness! This is exactly how I saw it playing out!'"
The changing times
This finish to the 2021 Daytona 500 is one that McDowell would love to replicate, albeit without the massive crashes and cars on fire. Yet, it has not been possible in the Gen 7 era.
The end of the 2021 race had one dominant lane on the outside, which featured Logano, Keselowski, McDowell, and Elliott. A second lane featured Dillon, Harvick, and many other contenders.
The 2026 race, for comparison, had the field three-wide on the final lap. The cars and the aero package did not allow for a single driver to back up, pull out of line, and generate a run to make a pass. If a driver pulled out of line, they would immediately lose momentum and fade back.
Immediately after rewatching the finish to the 2021 race, the veteran driver watched the finish to this season's Daytona 500. This is a race where he had the lead in the bottom lane after taking the white flag. Tammate Carson Hocevar led the outside lane and Tyler Reddick led the middle lane.
WHERE DID HE COME FROM?!
TYLER REDDICK IS A DAYTONA 500 CHAMPION! pic.twitter.com/IaXoaKwwMf
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) February 15, 2026
"This one stings more than most," McDowell said while hitting play on the video. " We had two cars leading coming to the white, and then it's over."
What happened after the drivers took the white flag? A push from Erik Jones on the outside lane turned Hocevar into the outside wall. He then shot across the track and crashed. Jones also spun and slammed into McDowell, taking him out as well.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. shot to the lead with Elliott on his outside and Reddick on his inside. Unlike the 2021 race, however, NASCAR let them race back to the line.
Reddick ultimately won after Riley Herbst sparked a last-second crash by trying to block Keselowski on the outside. Six more cars crashed behind Reddick as he took the checkered flag for the win.
"This one stung right here," McDowell added. "I mean, when you're first and second on the final lap of the 500 and don't bring it home, it definitely hurts."
McDowell is someone who has always prided himself on being in contention during superspeedway races. He did so during his time at Leavine Family Racing and at Front Row Motorsports as he delivered top-five finishes and that Daytona 500 win.
He has continued to contend after moving to Spire Motorsports. Although late crashes have taken him from the front of the pack to well outside the top 10 in the final results.
McDowell will get another opportunity to pursue another superspeedway win on Saturday night as he takes on the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway.
This race is not a crown jewel, but it would still be meaningful for McDowell, who seeks his first Cup win since the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in 2024.
Saturday night's race (7:30 p.m. ET on NBC) will provide an extra challenge as drivers use a new aero package without first testing it in practice, but the Spire Motorsports driver will respond as he always does.
He will prep with his team while figuring out which drivers will try to make the aggressive moves at the ends of the stages and the race. He will work through the scenarios for the final laps, which include deciding whether he should be in front or second in a row.
McDowell doesn't know how the race will play out, but he does know one thing. He can't follow the Ryan Newman approach of riding around in the back until the end and then contending for the win. That goes against his nature.
"I'm like Joey in the sense that I always felt the safest place to be is up front and to do that all day long," McDowell said. "And I would say if you look at the guys that typically win, they're typically up front.
"It's very rare those guys that would ride in the back, that would get good finishes, would win. They would get good finishes, but they wouldn't win. It was somebody that put themselves in that position all day long.
"...When we won the 500, we didn't run 30th all day. We ran top-five all day, and that's what puts you in position to have a shot at the end."
